The U.N.'s World Summit is Wrong on Development Assistance

About the Author

Perhaps the most
enduring myth codified in the 2005 World Summit of the United
Nations is the notion that lack of development in poor nations is
due to a paucity of economic assistance. The idea that development
requires greater aid flows is omnipresent in U.N. documents like
the World Summit "outcome document," which welcomes the "increased
resources that will become available as a result of the
establishment of timetables by many developed countries to
achieve the target of 0.7 per cent of gross national product for
official development assistance by 2015."[1]

This emphasis
endures despite numerous economic studies, including studies
conducted by the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund
(IMF), that have concluded that economic assistance is not a
key component in economic development. More recent studies
question whether aid has a positive effect on economic growth at
all. The research indicates that the policies that developing
nations adopt regarding economic freedom, the rule of law, and good
governance are far more important than aid.

In recognition of
this evidence, the 2000 Millennium Declaration and the 2002
International Conference on Financing for Development
emphasized the responsibilities of developing countries in the
development partnership. As noted by Ambassador John
Bolton:

In Monterrey, Mexico
in 2002, we all made commitments to fight poverty through
development. We agreed that we had to change the models of the
past, which focused primarily on resource transfers, to solutions
premised on the proven methods of good governance, sound policies,
the rule of law, and mobilization of both public and private
resources.[2]

Yet debate on
development leading up to the World Summit perversely focused on
aid over policies that encourage private investment and
entrepreneurship. The Bush Administration's efforts improved
the draft outcome document of the World Summit. Explicit
requirements for aid targets were amended, and text was inserted to
emphasize the importance of policies improving governance, the rule
of law, and economic liberalization.[3]

However, while the
final World Summit document is an improvement over the draft
document, it falls short on emphasizing the prioritization of
policies in development, instead focusing on the Millennium
Development Goals (MDGs) and resource transfers, such as increased
development assistance and debt forgiveness. President George W.
Bush did not improve matters when he endorsed the "Millennium
Development goals" in his General Assembly address, which many
advocates interpret as a promise by the U.S. to meet the 0.7
percent of GNP aid target.[4]

The goal of reducing
poverty is admirable and should be supported by the U.S., but
focusing on arbitrary aid targets and goals that are only
indirectly related to reducing poverty does little to advance
that objective. If the U.S. is to help poor countries to develop,
it should:

Reject targets for
foreign assistance. Calls for additional
assistance fly in the face of economic analysis, bolstered by
decades of practical experience, that supports the conclusion
that economic assistance is a minor factor in economic
growth.

Emphasize the
importance of good policy in development, including economic
freedom, good governance, and the rule of law. Numerous economic
studies have concluded that economic freedom, good governance, and
the rule of law are key drivers in promoting economic growth and
reducing poverty. Without economic growth, countries lack the
resources to support efforts to improve the lives of their citizens
or to meet the Millennium Declaration goals.

Call attention to
the fact that the Millennium Development Goals are not a
development strategy and that focusing on them risks shifting
focus away from the policies necessary for development.
While many
individual MDGs are desirable, they focus on the symptoms of
poverty rather than the causes. Focusing foreign assistance on
improving particular indicators may provide short-term improvements
in specific areas, but it does little either to contribute to
long-term economic growth or to help poor countries graduate
from the need for assistance in the first place.

Introduce a balanced
measure of development resources. Aid is not the most
important factor in development: Policies are. However, even if one
focuses on resource flows, most resources for economic development
and poverty reduction come through private financial flows
such as trade, investment, charitable organizations, and
remittances. Estimates of a nation's commitment to development
would be more meaningful if they incorporated these private
flows.

The United States
has been unjustifiably criticized for its resistance to aid
targets. In reality, it is those who push for billions in
additional aid, based on dubious economic grounds, who should be
criticized. Such calls for increased aid do little to help the
poor in developing countries and instead distract attention
away from policy changes that could improve the prospects for
growth. The U.S. should stand firm and not shy away from puncturing
the myth that more economic assistance is necessary for
development.

The Disappointing
History of Development Assistance

For decades, the
United States and other donor nations have tried to catalyze
economic growth in poor countries through bilateral and
multilateral development assistance. The record is one of
failure. Between 1960 and 2003, the U.S. and other developed
nations spent over $1.45 trillion (in 2002 dollars) in bilateral
and multilateral aid on development projects in 118 low-income and
lower-middle-income countries.[5]

Of the 111 countries
for which data are available, 35 (about one-third) actually
saw their per capita income shrink (in 2000 dollars) despite 45
years of development assistance. In other words, their populations
became poorer than they were in 1960. Another 26 countries
experienced slight compound annual growth of less than 1 percent of
per capita gross domestic product (GDP), and a further 25 saw
slightly better compound annual growth between 1 percent and 2
percent. Just 25 experienced annual compound growth of more than 2
percent in per capita GDP, and only 11 of the 25 experienced the
level of growth necessary (over 4 percent annual growth) to
noticeably close the gap with rich nations.

The record is
particularly poor in sub-Saharan Africa. Despite $465 billion (in
2002 dollars) in assistance between 1960 and 2003, including $49
billion from the U.S., sub-Saharan Africa's per capita income
increased by only $98 from $416 to $514 (in 2000 dollars).[6] To put
this in perspective, the entire GDP of sub-Saharan Africa in 2003
was $362 billion (in 2000 dollars).[7] Thus, after receiving
assistance totaling more than its entire GDP in 2003 over the past
four decades, sub-Saharan Africa has been treading water with over
one-third of countries experiencing a net decline in their per
capita GDP since 1960 and only three countries experiencing the
level of growth necessary to close the gap with the developed
world.

Moreover,
sub-Saharan Africa is the only region of the world that is not on
track to meet a single target of the U.N. Secretariat's
Millennium Development Goals, including the goals of reducing
poverty, hunger, and infant mortality; improving secondary school
enrollment for girls; increasing immunization for measles; and
increasing access to potable water.[8]

An Ineffective
International Response

The widespread
failure of poor countries to develop despite extensive foreign aid
has led donor nations to meet and reevaluate the Millennium
Declaration's development strategies at meetings such as the
June 2005 G-8 meetings and the U.N. World Summit. While these
meetings have produced voluminous documents filled with
admirable goals, they have failed to confront the failure of
development efforts. Instead, they have focused on measurable
targets that ultimately are more an indication of poverty than
they are the keys to its eradication.

For instance, the
September 2000 Millennium Declaration includes goals to halve, by
the year 2015, "the proportion of the world's people whose income
is less than one dollar a day and the proportion of people who
suffer from hunger and, by the same date, to halve the proportion
of people who are unable to reach or to afford safe drinking
water." It also includes the goal of ensuring by 2015 that
"children everywhere, boys and girls alike, will be able to
complete a full course of primary schooling and that girls and
boys will have equal access to all levels of education" and to
reduce "maternal mortality by three quarters, and under-five child
mortality by two thirds, of their current rates."[9]

The Millennium
Development Goals were developed after the Millennium
Declaration and use 48 indicators to measure progress toward the
goals stated in the Millennium Declaration.[10] The
indicators include a "poverty gap ratio," the "prevalence of
underweight children under five years of age," the literacy rate of
15- to 24-year-olds, the infant mortality rate, access to potable
water and sanitation, and disbursement of official development
assistance. Generally, the targets focus on improving the
indicators over 25 years between 1990 and 2015 on the assumption
that such improvements are indicative of development.

Missing the Forest
for the Trees

The Millennium
Development Goals measure the symptoms of poverty rather than the
causes. Despite numerous economic studies showing that good
governance, economic freedom, and the rule of law are key
factors in economic growth, specific indicators for these factors
are missing. Their absence is remarkable when one considers that
economic growth is the overarching goal. Without economic growth,
countries will lack the resources to support efforts to improve the
lives of their citizens.

Meeting the
Millennium Declaration goals- and, more important, creating the
ability for countries to continue progress already made toward
these goals-depends in great part on increasing economic growth.
Indeed, the World Bank estimated that halving severe poverty
in sub-Saharan Africa by 2015 would require annual growth of at
least 7 percent. Focusing on improving particular indicators may
offer paths for assistance to provide short-term relief of
suffering in specific areas, but it will do little to help poor
countries achieve the economic growth necessary for them to
develop and graduate from the need for assistance in the first
place.[11]

Over the past
decade, numerous studies have concluded that economic freedom, good
governance, and the rule of law are key drivers in
promoting economic growth and reducing poverty. A 1997 World
Bank analysis of foreign aid found that, while assistance
positively affects growth in countries with good economic policies
(free markets, fiscal discipline, and the rule of law),
countries with poor economic policies did not experience
sustained economic growth regardless of the amount of foreign
assistance received.[12]

Other studies have
reached similar conclusions, maintaining that aid can increase
economic growth in certain circumstances.[13] These studies conclude
that aid may help the poor to cope temporarily with some of the
consequences of poverty, but that countries beset by a weak rule of
law, corruption, heavy state intervention, and other policies that
retard growth will not experience increased economic growth
even with greater amounts of economic assistance. Subsequent
studies question whether aid could spur growth even in good policy
environments.[14]

Yet the United
Nations dismisses this extensive economic research and instead
strongly argues that development requires large increases in aid.
The U.N. Millennium Project, commissioned by U.N. Secretary General
Kofi Annan in 2002 to assess what is necessary to meet the MDGs,
advocated "a big push of basic investments between now and 2015 in
public administration, human capital (nutrition, health,
education), and key infrastructure (roads, electricity, ports,
water and sanitation, accessible land for affordable housing,
environmental management)."[15] Jeffrey Sachs, special
adviser to the U.N. Secretary General on global poverty, reaches
similar conclusions in The End of Poverty, which asserts
that developed countries must transfer "about $100 [billion] to
$180 billion per year for the period 2005 to 2015" to meet the MDGs
and that "Africa needs around $30 billion per year in aid in order
to escape from poverty."[16]

Two recent economic
studies, however, dismantle the arguments used by Sachs and
the U.N. for increased aid. William Easterly specifically
analyzed the evidence on whether increased aid or investment
can spur growth:

The classic
narrative-poor countries caught in poverty traps, out of which they
need a Big Push involving increased aid and investment, leading to
a takeoff in per capita income-has been very influential in
development economics. This was the original justification for
foreign aid…. Evidence to support the narrative is
scarce…. Takeoffs are rare in the data, most plausibly
limited to the Asian success stories. Even then, the takeoffs do
not seem strongly associated with aid or investment in the way the
standard Big Push narrative would imply.[17]

A 2005 study by two
economists at the IMF corroborates this conclusion. Their
research found "no evidence that aid works better in better policy
or geographical environments, or that certain forms of aid work
better than others."[18]

This does not mean
that development is an unreachable goal. A World Bank study found
that increased integration into the world economy from the late
1970s to the late 1990s led to higher growth in income. The more
integrated countries achieved 5 percent average annual growth in
per capita income during the 1990s.[19] In contrast, the
non-globalizing nations experienced average growth of only 1.4
percent during the 1990s, and many experienced negative growth
rates.

A related World Bank
study found that increased growth resulting from expanded trade
"leads to proportionate increases in incomes of the poor" and that
"globalization leads to faster growth and poverty reduction in poor
countries."[20] Easterly concurs in his 2005 study,
finding "support for democratic institutions and economic freedom
as determinants of growth that explain the occasions under which
poor countries grow more slowly than rich countries."[21]

These studies
confirm research at The Heritage Foundation. Analysis of 11 years
of Index of Economic Freedom data[22] indicates that
the best way for countries to increase economic growth is to adopt
policies that promote economic freedom and the rule of law. The
Index analyzes 50 economic indicators in 10 independent
factors: trade policy, fiscal burden of government, government
intervention in the economy, monetary policy, capital flows and
foreign investment, banking and finance, wages and prices, property
rights, regulation, and informal market activity. These 10
factors are graded from 1 to 5, with 1 being the best score
and 5 being the worst. The scores are then averaged to give an
overall score for economic freedom. Countries are designated
"free," "mostly free," "mostly unfree," or "repressed" based on
their overall scores.

As shown in the
Index, "free" countries have an average per capita income
twice that of "mostly free" countries. "Mostly free" countries have
a per capita income more than three times that of "mostly unfree"
and "repressed" countries. This relationship exists because
countries that maintain policies that promote economic freedom
provide an environment that facilitates trade and encourages
entrepreneurial activity, which in turn generates economic
growth. Not only is a higher level of economic freedom clearly
associated with a higher level of per capita GDP, but higher GDP
growth rates are associated with improvements in a country's
economic freedom score.[23] This relationship holds for sub-Saharan
Africa.[24]

The important
lessons here are plain. The economic futures of developing
countries lie predominantly in their own hands as determined
by the policies that they adopt and enforce. If countries want to
increase per capita GDP, they should adopt the policies that are
most likely to achieve that result: economic freedom, good
governance, and the rule of law. These policies remove the barriers
to economic growth and provide the framework necessary for markets
to work, thus paving the way for development. As noted in The
Road to Prosperity:

In technical terms
it is not the level of poverty that is most vicious, but rather the
absence of change or opportunity to escape that poverty. Where the
20th century approach produced a vicious cycle of aid, default, and
dependency on foreign governments, the IMF, or the World Bank, the
21st century holds out the prospect that countries can generate
growth and prosperity themselves, without foreign interference.[25]

The 0.7 Percent of
GNP Mirage

The Bush
Administration parts company with the United Nations and most other
donor nations over the means to achieve the goals in the Millennium
Declaration. As stated by Assistant Secretary of State for
International Organization Affairs Kristen Silverberg:

The U.S. stands by
its commitment to the goals in the Millennium Declaration. The
President has said so specifically. This is an important commitment
we made and, of course, we remain committed to it. Separate from
the Millennium Declaration, the U.N. Secretariat created a document
that provides a number of indicators, ways to measure, ways the
U.N. Secretariat thinks would be appropriate to measure progress
towards those goals. Some of them we agree with, some of them we
don't agree with.[26]

The main
disagreement is the 0.7 percent of GNP aid target, which the U.S.
refuses to endorse. A key point of contention is the notion that
increasing development assistance will result in improved results
and that development requires a massive increase in economic
assistance. As explained by Easterly, the basis for linking aid and
economic growth dates back decades to a simple model in which
economic growth depends on investment (domestic savings and foreign
aid) as a share of GNP. In this model, economic assistance is
necessary to fill the "financing gap" between domestic savings
and the investment necessary to meet growth targets. Looking at
data for 88 countries, Easterly found only one case in which
foreign aid led to increased investment and investment led to
increased economic growth. According to Easterly:

The "financing gap"
model in which aid increases investment and then that investment
increases economic growth has dubious theoretical foundations and
numerous empirical failings…. Yet the idea that "aid buys
growth" is an integral part of the founding myth and ongoing
mission of the aid bureaucracies.

Easterly notes that
the World Bank used this model to calculate the aid requirements
for meeting the Millennium Development Goal of cutting world
poverty in half.

Despite the
questionable basis for using aid targets in development strategies,
they continue to possess enduring weight in the U.N. and among
developing countries eager for increased income transfers from
developed countries. The specific target of 0.7 percent dates
back to the 1968 Pearson Commission report, which recommended that
a "much-increased flow of aid will be required if most developing
countries are to aim for self-sustaining growth by the end of
the century. This means specific aid targets [for] official aid
[of] 0.70 percent of GNP by 1975."[27]

This target was
passed by the General Assembly in non-binding resolutions. The
first was passed in 1970.[28] More recently, it was included among the
indicators for the Millennium Declaration goals and the proposed
outcome document of the September World Summit. The U.S.
successfully led an effort to amend the World Summit document to
remove such a commitment.

The U.S. is right to
balk at demands for increased development assistance based on
targets to which it has not committed. To meet this target, the
U.S. would have had to increase development assistance to nearly
4.3 times the $19 billion that it spent in 2004, or $82.5
billion.[29] Dramatic increases in foreign
assistance built on such shaky foundations deserve skepticism,
especially when they focus solely on government assistance while
ignoring the critical role of the developed countries themselves in
creating an environment that stimulates growth and the private
sector's role in providing most of the resources for economic
development and poverty reduction.

False Criticism of
America's Commitment to Development

Many have painted
President Bush's rejection of the 0.7 percent of GNP development
aid target as a lack of American commitment to development in
Africa. Based on the record, however, criticism of the Bush
Administration by aid advocates seems misplaced. America has
provided about $290 billion (in 2002 dollars) in bilateral
development assistance since 1960, or approximately one-fifth
of all official development assistance over that period.[30]
Under President Bush, America has doubled its development
assistance, including tripling its assistance to sub-Saharan
Africa since 2000. He also has championed access to the U.S. market
through the African Growth and Opportunities Act.

But such measures
tell only a small part of the story. Traditional measures of
national contributions to development entirely ignore the
private sector. This gross oversight not only dramatically
underestimates development resources, but also ignores the most
effective resources. As observed in American Interests and UN
Reform:

Most resources for
economic development and sustainable poverty reduction come through
trade, private financial flows, international charitable
organizations and expatriate remittances. The 0.7 percent of GDP
target would be more meaningful if other contributions relevant to
development were incorporated into this calculation, including
private charitable donations.[31]

Using such a
calculation, the U.S. Agency for International Development
estimates that total U.S. assistance to developing countries may
have been five times its official development assistance in 2000.[32]
Other efforts to measure contributions to development, such as the
Commitment to Development Index, which ranks the U.S. twelfth out
of 21 nations, similarly portray U.S. contributions more
positively than a simple measure of government assistance as a
percentage of GNP.[33]American Interests and UN Reform
summed up the situation:

[T]he most important
benchmark, of course, is the effectiveness of assistance in
achieving genuine economic growth and development to alleviate
poverty. The reality is that effective poverty reduction is often
delivered by private, nongovernmental groups and that sustainable
poverty reduction also requires investment, trade, and economic
growth.[34]

What the U.S. Should
Do

The U.S. recognizes
that, while development assistance may be useful, it is not
sufficient to reduce poverty. Far more important are the policies
adopted by developing countries. If the U.S. is to help poor
countries develop, it should:

Reject targets for
foreign assistance. Calls for additional
assistance fly in the face of economic analysis, bolstered by
decades of practical experience, that supports the conclusion
that economic assistance is a minor factor in economic
growth.

Emphasize the
importance of good policy, including economic freedom, good
governance, and the rule of law. Over the past
decade, numerous studies have concluded that economic freedom, good
governance, and the rule of law are the keys to promoting economic
growth and reducing poverty. Meeting the goals in the Millennium
Declaration-and, more important, strengthening each country's
ability to continue progress already made toward those
goals-depends in great part on increasing economic growth. Without
economic growth, countries will lack the resources to support
efforts to improve the lives of their citizens.

Call attention to
the fact that the Millennium Development Goals are not a
development strategy and that focusing on them risks shifting
attention away from the policies necessary for
development. The MDGs focus on
the symptoms of poverty rather than the causes. Even though
numerous economic studies have shown that good governance,
economic freedom, and the rule of law are key factors in
economic growth, specific indicators for these factors are missing.
Focusing foreign assistance on improving specific indicators may
provide short-term improvements in specific areas, but it will
not contribute to long-term economic growth or help poor countries
to graduate from the need for assistance in the first
place.

Introduce a balanced
measure of development resources. Aid is not the most
important factor in development: Policies are. However, even if one
focuses on resources flows, most resources for economic development
and poverty reduction come through private financial flows
such as trade, investment, charitable organizations, and
remittances. Estimates of a nation's commitment to development
would be more meaningful if they incorporated these private
flows.

Conclusion

The United States
should not apologize for pointing out that aid targets not
only are impractical, but also will not lead to development in poor
countries. Quite simply, the problem of development is not
insufficient resources, but developing countries' policy
choices. The U.S. is and should be prepared to help developing
countries that demonstrate a commitment to good policy, but
focusing on aid inputs rather than real components of long-term
growth and development is a futile exercise that will not help
those in poor nations who are suffering from their governments' bad
policy choices.

Brett D.
Schaefer is Jay Kingham Fellow in International
Regulatory Affairs in the Center for International Trade and
Economics at The Heritage Foundation. Heritage Research Associate
Anthony Kim contributed to the research for this
paper.

[2]John Bolton, U.S.
Ambassador to the U.N., open letter on the draft outcome document,
August 30, 2005, at www.un.int/usa/
reform-un-jrb-ltr-dev-8-05.pdf (September 14, 2005).

[3]The draft document
called on developed nations "to achieve the target of 0.7 per cent
of gross national product [GNP] for official development assistance
by no later than 2015 and to reach at least 0.5 per cent by 2009."
U.N. General Assembly, "Revised Draft Outcome Document of the
High-Level Plenary Meeting of the General Assembly of September
2005," August 5, 2005, at www.un.org/ga/59/hlpm_rev.2.pdf
(September 14, 2005).

[4]George W. Bush,
"Remarks by the President at the United Nations High-Level Plenary
Meeting," The White House, Office of the Press Secretary, September
14, 2005, at www.usunnewyork.usmission.gov/05gwb0914.htm
(September 21, 2005). Although the White House text indicates that
the President was talking about the goals identified in the
Millennium Decla­ration (which did not include the 0.7 percent
of GNP aid target) rather than the specific MDG indicators (which
include the aid target) identified by the U.N., MDG proponents have
been quick to interpret this as a commitment by the U.S. to meet
the target. Editorial, "Hopeful Words: On Helping the Poor," The
New York Times, September 15, 2005, p. A30, at
www.nytimes.com/2005/09/15/opinion/15thu2.html (September
21, 2005).

[5]Organisation for
Economic Co-operation and Development, International Development
Statistics, at www.oecd.org/dataoecd/ 50/17/5037721.htm
(September 14, 2005), and World Bank, World Development Indicators
2005, at www.worldbank.org/
data/onlinedatabases/onlinedatabases.html (September 14, 2005;
subscription required).

[10]"At the September
2000 U.N. Millennium Summit, U.N. member states adopted the
Millennium Declaration. Eight goals were identified in the
Millennium Declaration: eradicating hunger, achieving universal
education, empowering women, reducing child mortality, improving
maternal health, combating HIV/AIDS and other diseases, ensuring
environmental sus­tainability, and developing a global
partnership for development. The eighth goal includes commitments
by developing countries to adopt sound economic policies and good
governance and commitments by developed countries to increase aid,
to cooperate in debt forgiveness, and to develop further an open,
rule-based trading and financial system. To measure progress toward
the eight MDGs, experts from the U.N. Secretariat, IMF,
Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, and World
Bank developed a set of targets and indicators." Ana Isabel Eiras,
"Time for the International Mon­etary Fund and World Bank to
Reconsider the Strategy for Millennium Development Goals," Heritage
Foundation Back­grounder No. 1880, September 16, 2005,
at www.heritage.org/Research/TradeandForeignAid/bg1880.cfm.
See also U.N. Department of Economic and Social Affairs, Statistics
Division, "Millennium Development Goal Indicators Database," April
2005, at unstats.un.org/unsd/mi/mi_goals.asp (September 14,
2005).

[11]Indeed, nearly
every country in sub-Saharan Africa improved in life expectancy,
literacy, maternal mortality, and infant mor­tality (all of
which are MDG indicators) from 1970 to 1990. Yet few countries
experienced increased economic growth and development. World Bank,
World Development Indicators 2005.

[12]Craig Burnside and
David Dollar, "Aid, Policies, and Growth," World Bank, Policy
Research Department, Macroeconomic and Growth Division, June 1997,
and World Bank, Assessing Aid: What Works, What Doesn't, and
Why (Washington, D.C.: World Bank, 1998).

[13]Other studies
arrive at similar conclusions. For example, economists Richard Roll
and John Talbott support this conclusion with evidence that the
economic, legal, and political institutions of a country explain
more than 80 percent of the interna­tional variation in real
per capita income between 1995 and 1999 in more than 130 countries.
Richard Roll and John Talbott, "Developing Countries That Aren't,"
unpublished manuscript, University of California at Los Angeles,
November 13, 2001, p. 3. Other comparable studies include Paul
Collier and Jan Willem Gunning, "Why Has Africa Grown Slowly?"
Journal of Economic Perspectives, Vol. 13, No. 3 (September
1999), pp. 3-22; Robert J. Barro and Xavier Sala-i-Martin,
Economic Growth (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1995); Jeffrey D.
Sachs and Andrew Warner, "Economic Reform and the Process of Global
Inte­gration," in William C. Brainard and George L. Perry,
Brookings Papers on Economic Activity, 1995 (Washington,
D.C.: Brook­ings Institution Press, 1995), pp. 1-118; and David
Dollar, "Outward-Oriented Developing Economies Really Do Grow More
Rapidly: Evidence from 95 LDCs, 1976-1985," Economic Development
and Cultural Change, Vol. 40, No. 3 (April 1992), pp.
523-544.

[18]Raghuram G. Rajan
and Arvind Subramanian, "Aid and Growth: What Does the
Cross-Country Evidence Really Show?" National Bureau of Economic
Research Working Paper No. 11513, abstract, July 2005, at
papers.nber.org/papers/w11513 (Sep­tember 14,
2005).

[19]Paul Collier and
David Dollar, Globalization, Growth, and Poverty: Building an
Inclusive World Economy (Washington, D.C.: World Bank and
Oxford University Press, 2001), p. 5.

[20]David Dollar and
Aart Kraay, "Trade, Growth, and Poverty," World Bank, Development
Research Group, abstract of draft, March 2001, at
www.worldbank.org/research/growth/pdfiles/Trade5.pdf
(September 14, 2005).

[25]Marc A. Miles,
ed., The Road to Prosperity: The 21st Century Approach to
Economic Development (Washington, D.C.: The Heritage
Foundation, 2004), p. 8.

[26]Press briefing,
"Assistant Secretary of State for International Organization
Affairs Kristen Silverberg on United Nations Reform," U.S.
Department of State, August 31, 2005, at
www.un.int/usa/05ks0831.pdf (September 14, 2005).

[28]The U.N. General
Assembly adopted the "International Development Strategy for the
Second United Nations Development Decade," which includes the 0.7
percent of GNP aid target, without vote in Resolution 2626 in 1970
and Resolution 3362 in 1975. See U.N. General Assembly,
"Resolutions Adopted on the Reports of the Second Committee," 25th
Session, October 24- December 11, 1970, pp. 39-49, at
daccessdds.un.org/doc/RESOLUTION/GEN/NR0/348/91/IMG/NR034891.pdf?OpenElement
(September 15, 2005), and U.N. General Assembly, "Resolutions
Adopted by the General Assembly During Its Seventh Special
Session," September 1-16, 1975, pp. 3-9, at
daccessdds.un.org/doc/UNDOC/GEN/NR0/752/00/IMG/NR075200.pdf?OpenElement
(September 15, 2005). General Assembly resolutions are non-binding.
The United States and other nations voiced reservations about the
0.7 percent of GNP aid target contained in these resolutions, and
the U.S. has not committed to meeting this target.

[29]Organisation for
Economic Co-operation and Development, "Official Development
Assistance Increases Further-But 2006 Targets Still a Challenge,"
April 11, 2005, at
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[30]Organisation for
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[31]U.S. Institute of
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